An Iraqi soldier carries a displaced child from Ramadi on the outskirts of Baghdad. Iraqi security forces have deployed tanks and artillery around Ramadi in preparation for a counter-offensive. Photo: Reuters

Shi’ite militiamen allied to the Iraqi army have advanced to a nearby base in preparation for a counterattack.

A local government official urged Ramadi residents to join the police and the army.

The White House said a US-led air campaign will back multi-sectarian Iraqi forces in their counter-offensive on Ramadi, whose fall exposed the limits of US air power in its battle against the radical self-declared Islamic State.

“The United States will be very supportive of multi-sectarian efforts who are taking command-and-control orders from the Iraqi central government,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in Washington.

The US is anxious that the Shi’ite militia are controlled by the Iraqi authorities rather than Iranian advisers.

Also, it is worried that the fighting in Iraq will become a polarizing clash between Shi’ites and Sunnis.

The Islamist extremists set up defensive positions and laid landmines, witnesses said.

They were also going house to house searching for members of the police and armed forces.

The group has promised to set up courts based on Islamic Sharia law similar to those in other captured towns and cities.

They released about 100 prisoners from a Ramadi counter-terrorism detention center.

Saed Hammad al-Dulaimi, 37, a school teacher, said the jihadists used loudspeakers urging people who have relatives in prison to gather at the main mosque in the city center to pick them up.

“I saw men rushing to the mosque to receive their prisoners,” he said.

The move could prove popular with residents who have complained that people are often subject to arbitrary detention.

If anything, the Syrian civil war is a typical example of a proxy war, with the Syrians themselves getting increasingly irrelevant to how the conflict would play out. While it is quite unlikely that...

The United States has disinvited China from an upcoming large-scale multinational naval drill, terming it as a response to Beijing’s alleged militarization of islands in the South China Sea. “As an initial response to...

The Trump administration is considering a proposal to impose new tariffs on imported vehicles, invoking a national security law that was used to impose tariffs on aluminum and steel, Reuters reports, citing people with...

In today’s internet age, democracy can sometimes be its own worst enemy. Just look at the huge role social media is playing on how democratic societies exercise democracy. Social media can be a boon...

With football’s World Cup a matter of weeks away the world’s attention has already started shifting towards Russia, with all eyes increasingly focused on the likes of Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium and Saransk’s Mordovia Arena....